APPLICATION STATION 72

[maskedbreathing]

PLAYER INFO
Name: seimiya
Contact: plurk @ iambecoming
Are you over 18?: Yes

CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Alexander “Commander Wuertz” Renson
Canon: OC
Canon Point: After bringing down the Jupiter Organization (post-threshing, his canon novel)

Appearance:

Alex is tall, broad shouldered, and muscular, frequently with a few days of stubble and a scowl. He wears his hair short, almost buzz cut, and has dark eyes and plenty of worry lines in his face. This, of course, can only be seen when he’s not wearing the gas mask he tends to have on around strangers: his intense paranoia from being found out in canon would probably stick with him for a while. His clothing tends to be simple, modern, and well-worn: black army boots, jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black leather jacket with a teal number seven on the right breast. Also, he wears leather gloves most of the time, to hide his badly scarred hands. While he can shoot fire, he’s not immune to it, though he’s learned to cope with his hindered manual dexterity and the impressive layers of scar tissue built up on his hands. He usually has a gun on him as well.

His PB is Liev Schreiber. Picture reference.

Age: 38

Setting:

The world Alex grew up in might be our own. On the surface, it is exactly the same: subways bustle underneath New York City, businessmen mumble and grumble, wives gossip. But there are differences - big ones. The world that Alex Wuertz was born into as Alexander Smithson was rocked by an explosion of bizarre proportions three hundred years before his birth. This explosion attacked life based on population density more than structure, generating monstrous casualties in the big cities but leaving small towns and rural villages mostly alone. As a result, technology was saved, but people and world commerce ground to a halt and were forced to rebuilt the global economy. The sudden disappearance of the power structure leave a gaping hole in the world - a hole that was quickly filled by a organization that called itself Jupiter. The Jupiter Organization, a collection of intelligent, ambitious, and self-serving individuals combined with up-and-coming scientists and geneticists, manages to secure itself an enormous number of powerful positions all over the world before slowly slinking back into the shadows.

The explosion has also had one other major effect on the world: mutating the genes of the surviving humans. Quite a few people died from strange new genetic defects, but slowly, beneficial additions started showing up. People started showing powers, like something out of X-Men. In the couple of generations these sort of genetics explode in popularity, and then the percent lowers and stays that way. But the people who get these powers aren’t always the most noble, and the government and individual countries and states create positions to fight these super-powered baddies.

On a global scale, the Jupiter Organization notes this but doesn’t care. The purpose of the organization is to avoid another global catastrophe. It is more concerned with the possibility that people can explode skyscrapers, rather then the bank robbers and petty criminals. To this end, it puts its substantial power (even larger due to it’s secrecy and the rumors about it) into creating some sort of power limit, and comes up with a pill. Those who do not take the pill are killed.

Corruption is also rife. Seeing the mutually beneficial possibilities in having consolidated (if illicit) power, the Jupiter Organization and the governments it controls let it exist.


History:

A boy named Alexander Smithson is born, and lives a fairly average life. His father works for the health and skincare multibillion dollar giant Ceres Limited, his mother, a housewife. Alexander is a pretty average kid, a little on the snide side, very athletic, with the desire to be a police officer. His father, understanding the corruption in the police organizations and the organized crime rampant in New York City, objects strongly. But Alexander keeps this close to him, fueled by his blond best friend Christopher Gavin, who wants to be in intelligence. During puberty, Alexander discovers something awesome: he can shoot fireballs. Not without burning himself (they’re on his hands, after all!), true, but he can do awesome things. Then, suddenly, his mother starts making him take these pills that dull his powers significantly. Avoiding taking them gets a sharp scolding and even a whack in the face. So he does. But not without wondering where they come from, and why he’s got to do it.

Both of the boys graduate high school. Alexander, true to his dream, enrolls in police academy. But Christopher ends up in Ceres, for some strange reason that Alexander won’t find out for some time. It is in the academy that Alexander begins to understand the corruption that exists, and when he graduates, he becomes a police officer in New York City’s seventh precinct. When he refuses to bow to that corruption, his father ends up dead. Furious and afraid at 25, Alexander Smithson changes his name to Alex Wuertz and begins fighting as both a police officer and a vigilante against the corruption. He leaves his wife and his kid, knowing they’d be targets.

Alex eventually creates a second vigilante group which he calls “The Sevens.” He styles himself as Commander Wuertz and dons a gas mask to avoid the possibility of anyone learning his true identity. Over ten years, Alex slowly finds out that the source of the corruption is none other than Ceres Limited and it’s CEO has become his old friend Christopher Gavin. Even now, he fights against his friend and all the shit that New York City (especially the Seventh Precinct) has to deal with.

Consider the next ten or fifteen years as one very long battle montage of all kinds of missions and fighting: manipulation he despises to get to men that he despises more, full-out assault attacks on warehouses, moonlight sneak-attacks on front office buildings. Meetings in ramshackle get-togethers with his men and women trying to identify the best way to ruin their enemies. Very long nightmares of him being killed a thousand ways. He meets a woman who joins him, who he of course falls in love with, because she’s beautiful, and heroic, and where he always sees the worst, she’s there to point out the best. It helps, of course, that her powers are extraordinarily effective, and that she’s loyal and brave and, in a weird sick way that delights his paranoia, completely blind.

Like all missions to improve the world, his mission to make New York City a better place spirals into something better as he discovers the shadow organization that operate in New York and around the world. Like all people who want to do something good, he’s bogged down by all kinds of troubles, both real and imagined. Of course, there's the sleep debt that accumulates when one leads two lives. There's the regular guilt of having blood on your hands and the nagging sensation that it’s not worth it. There’s the deaths of your friends, indirectly by your hand, and the bringing down in infrastructure you can tell no one is for the greater good. There’s the forever-wearying fighting and worrying and secrets and dying.

Eventually, he’s rewarded for the misery, because he does, with the help of plenty of men and women and some luck and a quick wit - bring down Ceres, and then Jupiter. But like any war hero, the task of task of recreating a better future is equally as exhausting as destroying the old past. Despite his desire to disappear back into the world and mourn his dead girlfriend and his lost life, he knows just as well that he has to keep working. And it’s deeply exhausting and terrible to be trapped in bureaucracy.

Vigilante ex-cops weren’t made for the paperwork that comes with toppling corrupt secret societies.

Personality:


Growing up, Alex was a damn good kid, who worked hard and was generally nice to people.

However, the multi-year term he’s been serving as the incorruptible leader of a police organization that is very prone to corruption has taken its toll on his once-cheerful demeanor. Coming upon this man will result in you meeting someone that while not precisely unpleasant that is certainly not nice. Alex is deeply suspicious, paranoid, wry and even a little depressed (if not chemically, than certainly suffering some various PTSD symptoms that he wears like charms). To hide the fear and the paranoia, Wuertz’s response to almost everything is sarcasm, wry humor, distant pessimism with a small side of critical thinking. He’s world-weary and burned out. He’s got a hardened (some might say paranoid) demeanor, carefully sizing up everyone he meets to see if they will try to a) betray him, b) want to join his cause or c) are just an average john doe. Generally, though, he puts people in category A, knowing full well that his last best friend is now his worst enemy. Alex is accustomed to hiding his weakness as to avoid his enemies taking advantage of it, and keeping few friends (none, hopefully) so that Ceres cannot manipulate him through others.

Despite his paranoia, he knows very well the value of teamwork and has a complete comprehension of the value of trust. Gaining Wuertz as an ally or a friend (although there’s some argument that he’s simply too damaged at this point for real friendship) is gaining a consummate leader, a courageous battle-hardened soldier, and an experienced vigilante strategist. Here is a man who does not break promises, who will not leave without you, who will always come back to you. Not to mention, of course, that he has a full understanding of the battlefield and even knows a little bit about field medicine.

As a kid, Alex was big-mouthed and opinionated, and his vigilante leadership person has grown these parts of his personality. He’s a skilled, quick decision-maker, although his long, worn fight means that he has a tendency to treat people as objects, especially when they present easy means to his end. Even further, here’s a man who has accepted responsibility for enough death that such things don’t phase them like they used to. A fight against an enemy with powerful manipulative skills means that he’s plenty stubborn and has complete confidence in himself, or at least resents a good front of it.

As a strategist, Alex is an in-your-face, full-speed ahead type when he’s able. He despises duplicity and hates mental tricks. He also has long since given up on diplomacy as a tactic, and he finds people who think peace without war is a possibility to be pointlessly optimistic and naive.

While not a hero in the traditional sense, Alex’s whole battle is fighting for the good of law and justice, whatever that means (he’s not sure anymore). Part of him wants to call himself a good guy, but he knows better. He falls back on violence as an easy solution to most problems (that he’s strong and shoots fire), and finds diplomacy irritating and too easy to be manipulated by those seeking to control others. He’s not charismatic (and being paranoid, sarcastic, and wearing a gas mask doesn’t help), but he’s a pretty good critical thinker and an excellent tactician, running a guerilla war for the better part of 10 years.

He tries to keep a lid his temper, but there are some things that always get him, and, if left alone for long enough, the melancholy, burnout depression can catch up to him, and man does he become an angry emo kid. And he knows it, too, so even if he doesn’t like the company of others, he prefers it to the alternative. Additionally, having many of his friends killed for this cause has made him pretty dark about people and himself, while he knows isolating himself will just make him feel worse, that’s all he wants to do. There’s a dark depression curling at the corners of his consciousness that he both wants to fight off and give into. He’s already got one suicide attempt under his belt, after all.

Canon Abilities/Skills:

He can shoot fire out of his hands. It is important to note that while he does not feel pain from the fire he creates, the palms of his hands have suffered some pretty awful scarring from it.

Other than that, he is a perfectly average human, albeit with a mind filled with strategies and reconnaissance and battlefield medic-ing.

ON STATION 72

Symbiote Specialization: Iota

Symbiote Ability: BODY HARDENING

Wuertz can temporarily become invulnerable to physical attacks and other physical damages. He can change states at will and with a mental command, though he’s momentarily disoriented when entering and leaving hardened form.

While his body is hardened, he does not need to breathe. While any lingering effects will pause when his body is hardened, they will resume when he re-enters flesh form. For example, if you were to throw acid on him while his body was hardened, when he became flesh again, he would promptly be burned by it. Likewise, if he was poisoned, hardening would not purge the poison from him. While in hardened state he can shoot fire if his palms are exposed, but if they aren’t, he’s out of luck. Anything he is holding or wearing becomes inaccessible and invulnerable along with him when he hardens. For example, if he were to harden with his right hand holding a gun and his left palm expose, his gun-holding hand would only be useful for bludgeoning things with a gun-shaped mallet, but he would be able to shoot fire out of the other hand. Body hardening does not give him any additional strength. He has a mental knowledge of whether he is running out of body-hardened time.

LEVEL 1:

(+) Wuertz can harden his skin for up to 5 minutes every five hours.
(-) While he can move in this form, he can only go as fast as a medium-paced walk.
(-) While in hardened form, he suffers from decreased manual dexterity and cannot clench his hands into fists or do complex tasks (ie: he would fall out of hardened form before he was able to type a proper message on a computer)
(-) While in hardened form, he sees in greyscale.
(-) Upon leaving hardened form, he feels achey and sore, like waking up the day after a strenuous workout. The longer he is in hardened form, the worse he feels when he exits.
(-) He only knows 10 seconds before it happens if he is out of body hardened time.
(-) If he maxes out his hardened time, coming out of it feels like being slammed by a door.
(-) If he’s out of body hardening time and tries to re-enter hardened time, it feels like someone’s punched him in the face.

LEVEL 2:
(+) Wuertz can harden his skin for up to one hour every five hours.
(+) His mental hardening clock starts five minutes before he runs out of time.
(-) At level two, Wuertz can move as quick as a power-walk in hardened form.
(-) Entering hardened time causes him to momentarily lose his train of thought.
(-) Leaving harnessed time causes him to momentarily become nauseous.
(-) Maxing out body hardening time causes him to faint.

LEVEL 3:
(+) Wuertz can harden his skin for up to three hours every five hours.
(+) Wuertz can move at regular human speed, including a run, under his regular physical limitations.
(+) Wuertz sees in full color in hardened form.
(-) It’s probably a good idea for him to be sitting, or holding onto something, when he enters and leaves hardened form, because it momentarily completely stuns him.
(-) When he leaves hardened form, his skin becomes very sensitive.
(-) If he maxes out his hardened time, he is unconscious for up to thirty seconds.



Inventory:

Wuertz is usually well-equipped on missions, and this one would be no different. His notable possession is his gas mask, which he would be wearing - this item has been tinkered and specialized over and over, until it possessed huge amount of features including different lenses like night vision and heatseeking, as well as a cobbled-together HUD. It also contains a voice modulator which makes it impossible to identify him by his voice, and, of course, purifies the air that he breathes.

He also is carrying the following:
-A few granola bars or other compact snacks
-Two knives, one in each boot.
-A Glock 9MM and an extra clip or two.
-Swiss army knife
-His cell phone

Clothes: Black leather jacket, T-shirt, sweat-wicking undershirt, jeans, boots with tacks in the soles, black leather gloves.

SAMPLES
Samples: TDM | MUSEBOX

Rescue Write-up:

After all of this, after everything, after sitting in shacks eating protein bars for days and dealing with screams of men that didn’t know what they were involved in - he’s at this desk. It’s two AM and he’s wide awake, mask off, thoughts whirling, staring at the desk. He can’t remember the last time he slept properly, anyway. Seems that he could at least he putting himself to thinking about how government should be now. Only -

Only he knows better. Knows the men he sees, knows the end of him trying to create a government. He is not that type. He is made for eating protein bars and running rescue missions and pummeling other human beings until they tell him what he needs to do. And that - that’s gotten him here.

Some rule appears in the back of his head. Men get promoted until they find something they suck at, and everyone wonders why they suck. Well, it took him a whole guerrilla war, the estrangement of everyone he cared about, and ten years, but they managed.

This isn’t for you, says a voice, somewhere, low and dark.

“Fuck, right,” he groans, and then he startles upright and stares, yanking the mask over his face. Nothing. Nothing in nightvision, nothing in UV, nothing in infrared. Maybe he’s finally losing it. He wouldn’t be surprised. He might even welcome it.

Come for something that is for you, the voice says, and he draws his gun and stares into the corner where the voice is coming from. Emanating like smoke. The shadows on the wall curl into an offering hand. He really is losing it, and maybe he should be more upset about that.

He looks at the hand on the wall. He has the stupidest feeling that he can touch it. Looks at the desk.

“What’s for me?” he asks the hand. He takes a rattling breath as he sits down at the desk and starts putting granola bars in his pockets. He’s pretty sure granola bars are for him.

Heroism is for you, the corner says. He laughs at that.

“Don’t shit me,” he says. Somehow, the corner has the sense to appear apologetic. God. This really is the fucking end. How cold can the deep end be? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because all he’s got here is this desk, and the shreds of what he had left, and bureaucracy. He takes a breath from the mask, remembers the taste of processed air. Remembers what it was like to stop into warehouses and set fire to product. Remembers the delicious feeling of trashing computers.

“Ok, I want what’s for me,” he says, and he steps into the corner.